Agree with diggin,I'm also building my team based on having money left for extensions. An 1150 in season cap I could live with.
I think we have to remember that this is the initial auction and salaries will seek there own level in the next couple of seasons

I wasn't talking about how much I paid for guys, I just used my players as an example. I just don't think there is enough reward to extensions. I wouldn't recommend changing it mid-draft, I would recommend starting over or changing it for future contracts after this year. I'm very happy with my team, but I think it's silly to think that it will be smart to extend more than a handful of players.

Posted by Beernoser on 10/29/2012 6:22:00 PM (view original):When I came home from work tonight I looked at e-mails and I was surprised to see the earliest one I got was at about 11 am this morning. Usually I have 1-2 from 1-3 am. If you sent yours in those wee hours, please resend it to me. I am still having e-mail hacking problems.

I didn't send mine in last night, I usually send mine in right when you put them up. I was coming back from the World Series game...

Okay, back from my weekly night out with the boys at the Chess Club. It's easy to think there.

So, let's get the rules finalized.

There has been concern expressed about the need for encouraging long term contracts more because the current rules may not incentivize them enough. I'd like to wait and see on this. In February we'll get the first group of long term signings, and then in October we'll really get a good idea. I'd like to wait until at least then to see if this is a needed change or not. Fillies wisely said that the players value will seek their own levels as it's a marketplace.

If it turns out we do need to do more to encourage long term signings, there have already been two interesting proposals made, one by Ox and one by Lou. For now though, let's table this discussion until we know if things are working or not.

To werewolf's concern about finding committed owners, I'm really not worried about this too much. This league is very unique. I think there are a lot of owners who are probably looking in on our draft and would love to join, even with a lousy team. I'm also heartened by the e-mails. I was expoecting to get about half the owners sending one in each day and was worried that people would disappear for a week. It still may happen, but right now I'm getting e-mails from 20-23 people a night. And that's with the e-mail hacking problems which my son tells me he has now fixed. We'll see.

For the in-season trading, I want to settle on Lou's compromise number, 1,150.

So here's the league schedule.

Each year around October we'll have our annual auction.

By the end of the auction your salaries must be 1,000 or less.

Sometime around December-January we'll play our WIS season. Due to preseason and in-season trades, your salaries can go up to a maximum of 1,150.

In February you have a chance to sign your newly auctioned players to long term contracts using their auction values as first year salaries. You salaries must be 1,000 or below.

From March to October you'll watch your players play real major league baseball on tv.

In October you'll have to decide on each of your players whether to release them as free agents or sign them again if their contracts are finished. If you sign them, their first year salary must be a raise from their last year's salary.

Going into the auction you must have 1,000 or below. You better be below to give yourself some room to buy some rookies and free agents because at the end of the auction you must be at 1,000 or below.

Hope that all makes sense. Sorry to have this come up during the auction. Trading during the auction was something I hadn't anticipated. In the end I don't think it worked.

After looking into the salary situation further I think we should stick with the hard cap of $1000 throughout the entire year. This was in the original post by Beernoser before the draft had begun:

"Each team has $ 1,000 to spend on their players to fill their team. Remember to leave some money for free agent and rookie signings though."

Each owner was warned that they should save some room for roster flexibility and I know that I have been bidding with the plan of saving a certain portion of my $1000. Creating a soft cap changes the bidding philosophy of all owners and I don't see why anything should be altered when this situation was explained for the get go just because a few owners have made poor decisions and put themselves in a bind.

My original thinking was never to worry about salaries during the season. The 1,000 was for after the auction, after resign period and before next year's auction.

My worry about the in season trading was actually the other direction. I started getting worried with teams buying 1,000 worth of talent during the season from second division teams so the team that made the playoffs wouldn't even resemble the one that earned the playoffs.

That's why I started thinking of an in-season limit. I think 1,150 is a fair limit. It lets you add a player or two for the stretch run, but doesn't let you buy a whole new team.